40-year career comes to a close

When Debbie Berto assumed the helm of The Issaquah Press in the early 1970s, she was only a couple years out of college and had no managerial experience. To top it off, she was just 24 and pregnant with her first child. But her boss saw something in her that made him confident he’d made the right choice.

“I never had any training in business management,” Berto admitted. “The Press was losing money in those early years, so John Murray didn’t have much to lose by putting me in charge. It wasn’t long before he predicted that I would retire from The Press. I couldn’t imagine that that was possible.”

Debbie Berto Press publisher

Now, 40 years later, Berto is indeed ready to retire, having worked from advertising representative to publisher of the 114-year-old newspaper.